


Behind the Mask

by BuckeyeKitty



Series: MCYT Oneshots [7]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Don't Trust the Mask, Don't tear me to pieces pls, Fluff, I hadn't watched any of Dream's streams before writing this, Look I don't know how to do the whole streaming thing, Other, Panic Attacks, This is the first fanfic I wrote for the MCYT/Dream fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:47:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27340726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuckeyeKitty/pseuds/BuckeyeKitty
Summary: Dream is often not in control of his actions during manhunts, specifically during battles. A manhunt goes really south and he drops off the internet for several weeks. Will he tell his friends or will they be kept into the dark.
Relationships: can be read as platonic or romantic - Relationship
Series: MCYT Oneshots [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980298
Comments: 2
Kudos: 104





	Behind the Mask

Dream had already killed Bad based on his annoyed groan, he was attacking Sapnap, _He didn’t want to hurt him._

“George ----- Do you ----- Dream ----- slower!?” Sapnap’s voice came in and out of Dream’s ears, _was he cutting out? No George and Bad aren’t commenting on it, it must be me._

“NO!” Sapnap yells, signalling his death.

“Come Here George!” He hears his own voice say.

“No, No, Dream, please!” George pleads.

Clay snaps to awareness, George’s eyes wide in fear, are what he focuses on. He jerks back, thinking about getting the mask over his face off, his hands don’t respond or at all, his arms are hanging limply at his sides, sword slipping out of his grip. “George-” He starts.

“What do you want, Dream?”

“George what’s happening?!” Sapnap asks.

“George, the mask.”

“What about your mask?” George’s voice starts to sound concerned.

“George?” Bad asks.

It’s coming, his vision is going black.

“George, take off my mask, please.”

“Dream?”

He’s losing control, “Take it off now, Please GEORGE!”

George rips the mask off his face.

His vision comes back.

George is handing him back the mask.

Clay takes it, drops it to the ground, and stomps on it breaking it to pieces.

“Dream?” George asks.

He’s shaking, he had noticed his hands when he grabbed the mask, his hands, they were stained red, red with blood, his friend’s blood.

“Dream?” George asks again.

Clay’s head snaps up and he sprints away.

“DREAM!” George yells after him.

“What’s happening, Muffin!?” Bad.

“George!” Sapnap.

Clay leaves Minecraft and leaves the Teamspeak call soon after.

He sits staring at his screen for three minutes until he realized he wasn’t breathing enough, _he had hurt his friends, he had hurt them over and over and over again, without hesitation, all because of some stupid smiley face mask._ The edge of his vision darkened and that only made him panic more. He’s having trouble breathing, his breath coming out in short and quick gasps.

“Meow?”

_Patches! She can help me!_ He pushes off his desk, stands up from his chair, and opens his office door.

Patches rubs on his legs and he picks her up. He sinks to the ground with her in his arms.

He calms down after what feels like forever, tears dried on his face, _he had been crying?_ He turns off his computer and goes to his bedroom. Clay lays down and falls asleep soon after.

* * *

George was confused, the past few minutes were probably the weirdest experience of his life, now Dream was shaking, _why was he shaking?_ , he was staring at his hands. “Dream?” He asks for the third time in two minutes.

Dream’s head snaps up and he sprints away.

“DREAM!” He yells after his friend.

“What’s happening, Muffin!?” Bad yells.

“George!” Sapnap yells.

‘Dream had left the game’ chat reads out.

“Buddy left your channel”

“George, George, what happened?” Sapnap says as he arrives.

“It’s that Dream’s mask?” Bad asks a second after.

“Yes.”

Sapnap touches his shoulder, “George, what happened, why did Dream leave.”

“After he killed Sapnap, he chased after me but when I did the whole ‘No, no, Dream, please!’ thing he stopped. He called my name and I said ‘What do you want, Dream?’. Then he begs me to take off his mask, which I do after he yells my name.”

Sapnap and Bad nod, they had heard that.

“I handed him back his mask and he drops it to the ground and stomps on it to make it break. Then he just stands there shaking, staring at his hands, then he runs off after I called his name. I don’t know why he left.”

“Okay, okay,” Sapnap says, “Let’s give him time to figure, whatever’s happening, out. If he doesn’t reach out to any of us, or say anything on social media by _his_ tomorrow we’ll ask him about it.”

“That sounds fair,” Bad agrees.

George did say anything.

“George?” Sapnap asks.

“Yeah, that’s fine, sounds good.”

The three of them leave Minecraft, say their goodbyes, and leave Teamspeak.

The next day

**‘I’m having some problems in my personal life, I won’t be uploading or streaming for a while,’** Dream’s tweet read on George’s feed.

Support was all over the replies.

George put his own support in a retweet, reminding Dream he’s there to talk if he needs to.

_“Did you see Dream’s tweet?”_ He texts Sapnap.

_“Yeah, I bet it has something with what happened yesterday.”_

He switches to a group chat with Bad and Sapnap in it.

_“What should we do?”_

_“Leave him be for now,”_ Sapnap tells them both.

_“Then what??”_

_“We just have to wait until he’s ready to talk about it,”_ Bad texts.

_“Just stream as normal,”_ Sapnap says.

_“Okay.”_

* * *

Clay had George’s stream up on his computer, it was muted and he wasn’t in the room, he was in the kitchen, freaking out again. He had seen everyone’s support on his tweet, including George, Sapnap, and Bad’s, which unknown to them only made him feel worse.

“I should apologize to them, Patches, about hurting them, about leaving the video, shouldn’t I,” Clay says, knowing she can’t respond to him.

“Meow.”

“I can’t talk to them, Patches, but I need to explain about the mask, I can’t..” Clay sighs, running a hand through his dirty blonde hair.

* * *

Three weeks later

Clay was sitting at his computer, George’s stream up on his computer, it was unmuted, he had watched the second week of him not talking to anyone online, and unmuted it last week, now he was going to send a couple messages in chat, maybe.

“Dream, if you’re at your computer send a message,” George says.

Clay’s fingers hover over his keyboard, but he doesn’t type anything.

“I know you’re at least lurking Dream, I can at you in chat.”

_‘Hi,’_ He types.

“Dream!”

Chat blows up, saying hi to him.

People asked if he would be joining the stream.

_‘I will not be joining the stream, sorry to disappoint everyone.’_

“You’re fine, Dream, you come back to the internet at your own pace.”

People agreeing with George come through chat.

_‘Thanks everyone.’_

“Thanks for popping in Dream, you can leave at your own convenience.”

_‘Thanks, I’m going to lurk, bye everyone!’_

“Bye Dream!”

Chat fills up with _‘Bye Dream’_ ’s.

Clay takes a deep breath, that wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be. George didn’t push, _thank god._ “Hey, Patches,” He said as Patches came into his office.

After he has been watching George’s stream, for a while Sapnap has joined him both in Minecraft and in the Teamspeak, the topic of conversation comes back to Dream’s absence.

“Guys, Dream will come back when he’s ready,” George says.

“Yeah, we don’t really know why he’s taking a break, and even if we did it’s his to share,” Sapnap adds.

Clay smiles at his friends telling George’s chat to let Dream come back on his own, then Sapnap words, _“we don’t really know why he’s taking a break,”_ wipes the smile from his face, they didn’t, they didn’t fully understand, of course he knew that, but the reminder made him want to tell them, to explain himself. “I need to tell them………I can’t not yet.”

Later on George ends the stream and Clay resolves to do a speedrunning stream in two days. He sends out a tweet, **‘I’m going to try a solo speedrunning stream my normal time, two days after this tweet is live. I can’t say how long the stream will be, it depends what I’m up to. See you guys there!’**

He gets up and makes himself dinner, he eats, then he goes to his computer and starts to change his skin, he keeps his green background but changes the white smiling blob thing to something, anything else. He also goes to change his icons on his social media to the new thing, though it wasn’t sent in stone.

He spent the next couple days changing his icons, also announcing the change on all his social medias, he also watched his friend’s streams, chatting occasionally.

* * *

He took a deep breath, made sure he had everything set up for speedruns and started the stream, then he set out posts on his social medias.

Chat was filled with hype, hype over the fact it had been over 3 weeks since they had a Dream stream.

“Hey guys, how are you doing today?”

Chat blew up with answers.

He chuckles, “Okay, okay, I’m going to speedrun to get back used to Minecraft, as I haven’t been playing over my break. And before any of you ask, I’m not ready to talk about _why_ I was taking a break. Let’s get into the first speedrun.”

_‘Did you change your skin, too?’_ A chat message asks as he is speedrunning.

“I did,” He goes into F5, “There’s the new skin. How do you guys like it?”

Chat’s opinions start up in the chat.

“It’s not the for sure skin, I just needed a change.”

_‘Glad to see you’re streaming!’_ Sapnap says in chat later on.

“Hey Sapnap, can I get a mod other than Sap to give him a shout out.”

_‘No, I don’t need a shoutout!’_

_‘To late~’_ Georgenotfound says in chat, giving him a shoutout a moment later.

“Can another mod give Georgenotfound a shoutout. Sap this is the perfect time to get him back for shouting you out.”

_“On it.”_ Sapnap says and then gives George a shoutout.

A couple hours later, Clay starts to feel a bit panicky. “I’m going to finish this run and then get off, sorry for the shorter stream guys.”

Messages of _‘That’s okay’_ and _‘I’m just glad you’re getting back into streaming’_ flood chat.

He finishes the run and says goodbye to his viewers and raids another Minecraft streamer.

Two weeks later

Clay had been streaming occasionally, he hadn’t talked to George, Sapnap, Bad, or any of his friends other than through Twitch chats. Clay decides to send one of his friends a text.

_“Hey you want to do a stream w/ me, tomorrow?”_ He sends Sapnap the first text that any of his friends have gotten for a while.

_“Sure, what are we doing?”_ Sapnap sends back.

_“SMP.”_

_“K”_

They weren’t pushing, he knew they wanted to know what had happened, but they were waiting until he was ready.

Throughout the coming weeks, he starts talking to his friends one by one, George being the last one to receive a text from Clay asking if he wanted to stream with him.

Chat had noticed that he was a bit more jumpy when he was streaming with George.

* * *

Finally three months after the original incident Clay asked Bad, Sapnap, and George into a Teamspeak call.

“Dream?” George asks, “What are we doing?”

“Clay,” he gets out.

“What?” Sapnap asks.

“Call me Clay please, at least for this conversation.”

“Okay, Clay what’s going on?” Bad asks.

“Do you all remember when I bailed on a recording?”

“Yeah? We were, and still are, worried about you,” Sapnap says.

“I barely remember any of that recording,” Clay says quietly.

“What?” Bad asks.

“What do you mean?” Sapnap asks.

“I remember bits and pieces of attacking Sap at the end, and then I came to full awareness when George pleaded like you all do. I tried-I tried to take my mask off myself, but my arms wouldn’t move.”

“Clay? Do you know why you don’t remember?” George asks.

“The mask.”

“The mask?” Sapnap asks.

“The mask, the mask is what told me-it told me to kill you all, over and over and over again, In theory it would have been better in a lot of videos for me not to come back around and kill you, I should have focused on my goal of getting the end, but the mask told be to circle back, and I did.”

“Why did you listen to it?” Bad asks.

“Bad!” George exclaims.

“It started with small suggestions, that helped, at first I didn’t listen to all of them, all of the suggestions, but then the more I listened to them, the more control it got over my body. I lost control. There are a handful of fights in videos I don’t remember, I didn’t mention anything because I was in control most of the time, but then I came back to that time.”

“And you saw things that told you, we were far into the video,” Sapnap says.

“I saw the ender eyes, the fact that George was in iron, and how you guys were acting when you died, and I knew I missed a lot if not almost all of the video, there was also….” He trailed off.

“Also?” George prompted.

“I saw the fear in George’s eyes and it terrified me, it made me realize that the mask wasn’t a good thing, it was bad, it was doing things with my body I didn’t want to do.”

“Clay…” George starts.

“I left because I couldn’t stand to look at any of you, I had hurt you so much, you were _scared_ of me, and I didn’t want to see it. Your blood was on my hands and it scared me. I was afraid of losing you all. I left the game and the Teamspeak because I was panicking, I had a panic attack once I left, Patches helped me through that.”

“You had a panic attack?” Bad asks.

“Yeah, like full on not being able to breath, it didn’t help that my vision was trying to go black.”

“You yelled my name because you were losing control so you needed the mask off like right them.”

“Yep, my vision was going black and I was losing control of my body, my legs, my arms.

“Where did you find the mask again?” Sapnap asks.

“I just found it one day, I was younger and more stupid, and I thought _“Oh this is a great way to hide my identity”_. Young Clay was so naive.”

“So you're not actually that good at the game?” George teases.

“No, I’m still that good, I’m just not as psychopathic.”

Three annoyed groans ring through the call.

They all talk for a while until, Sapnap, George, and Bad start talking about previous fights in different manhunts. They got to one that Clay didn’t remember. He hears what Dream had done during the fight, he had watched the fight when he was editing but hearing it from their point of view scared Clay.

He finally spoke up, “I’m sorry, Oh God, I’m so sorry, so so sorry.”

“Clay, Clay, it’s not your fault, you didn’t know and that’s okay, can you focus on my voice,” George rambles, he gets an idea, “Clay, can you go grab Patches for me, and give her a big hug.”

Clay turns in his chair, Patches jumps into his lap, “Oh, I didn’t know you were right there,” the panicked, wet voice of Clay, the other three were alerted that he had Patches. He hugs her.

“Deep breathes, Clay,” Sapnap speaks up.

After a few minutes, “Thanks guys, sorry I broke down there.”

“You’re fine, muffin.”

Clay smiled at his monitor.

“You changed your skin, because it was based off of the mask,” George says.

“Yeah, I did that literally the same day and the day after, I announced I was going to stream again.”

“Which was the same day you chatted in my stream.”

“Yeah, you didn’t try to push me to talk about what happened, that helped, a lot, probably a lot more than I know at the moment.”

“We knew you would come to us when you were ready,” Sapnap says.

“What also helped was you guys weren’t pushing and you were telling everyone else not to push me about it. I knew you wanted answers but you waited til I came to you.”

“Of course,” Bad says.

They talk for a while longer.

“Clay, you don’t have to answer this, but I feel like it’s important,” George says.

“Okay?” He says confusion in his voice.

“When do you want to film the next manhunt video?”

“I um..”

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“I think we should want a couple more weeks and we should film one, that we check because the fans noticed that I was more jumpy when you guys were in the stream with me, or when I was on your guys stream, and I don’t want them to be focusing on that.”

“That’s smart, doing a video that never has to see the light of the day, so you can get back in the grove,” Sapnap says.

“Thanks Sap.”

“Maybe you should do like a one or two hunters before you go straight into three hunters plus,” Bad suggests.

“Yeah, that would be smart,” Clay agrees.

“Make something like Bad couldn’t make it to the recording,” George says.

“I could just do a different recording while you guys are doing that.”

“When we do the first one, can you at least be on the call, cause I’m not going to get a good feel for it again without all three of you there.”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“Wait, I spectate a Minecraft Manhunt, you do like commentary, you can see what both Clay and George and I are doing, you’re on your own call or like muted to us or something,” Sapnap suggests.

Everyone laughs.

“Yes,” Bad says, “Clay please, can I, that would be amazing!”

“Sure, go for it.”

“YESSS!”

Clay, George, and Sapnap laugh at his excitement.

“Since we're on a call, wanna stream?” George asks.

“Isn’t it late for you George?” Sapnap asks.

“So?”

Clay chuckles, “Sure, all our channels or only a couple?”

“All, so they get all the point of views,” Bad says.

“What can we even do, other than manhunt?” Sapnap asks.

“Games on hypixel,” Clay suggests.

“You’re right.”

“This isn’t when any of us stream normally, definitely need to send out messages,” Bad says.

They each put out posts on all their social medias saying they would be streaming in 20 minutes.

They went through the stream, all their chat’s noticed Dream was more comfortable then he has been since he came back.

_‘Were you all on a call before you started to stream?’_ Clay read out the chat.

“Yeah, we were,” Sapnap says.

“And the why is our business,” George says.

“Got a question about that already?” Bad asks.

“Yeah.”

“F’s in the chat, we didn’t even get to answer the question.”

The four of them laugh.

It’s not perfect, Clay has some trouble doing manhunt videos at first, and he’s more nervous to do manhunt’s live for a while, but his friends are there to help him through any of those problems.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you Enjoyed! 
> 
> Comments and Kudos are appreciated.


End file.
